Words squeezed through a filter

STEPHANIE SALTER, Examiner columnist.

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, April 20, 1997

SEVERAL YEARS ago, during a Buddhist retreat, I happened upon an ironic realization.

For days I had been learning to follow my breath, to slow all acts to a snail's pace, to meditate by sitting zazen. Prohibited for long stretches from talking or writing, I discovered the restful joy of inner and outer silence.

A repeating theme of the retreat was to practice "loving detachment" - to see and respect all things around me, but to strive not to engage on any reactive level and thus lose spiritual balance.

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Lovingly detach at a daily newspaper? Don't react? Find peace and enlightenment by getting as far away as possible from words?

One of my favorite descriptions of journalism is

"literature in a hurry." Probably that flatters the journalist and maligns the novelist, but you get the idea. Column writing is sort of "wisdom in a hurry."

The great New York Times sports columnist, Red Smith, coined one of the most popular images of the profession by saying that it's easy - you just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

I used to think Smith was being melodramatic (albeit poetic). Ten years and three months after I began writing this column, I know better. The longer I'm at it, the harder it is to write a column.

A few people I encounter don't believe this. To them, I

"get to blow off" about anything I want. Or, quite sincerely, they ask: "You write three columns a week? What do you do the other two days?"

But most people do understand.

A veteran reporter pal, accustomed to page-one bylines at Red Smith's paper, says she wouldn't write a column for any amount of money. My job, she says, "is like taking your clothes off in Macy's window three times a week."

My own metaphor is more utilitarian. I see myself as a filter. Like most people, I observe what goes on around me - the good, the bad, the ugly, the proud and profane - and my insides respond. My heart breaks or soars. My gut wrenches. My rage explodes. My faith wobbles. My hope atrophies.

Then I take that sea of emotions, combine it with as much factual information as I can gather in a day or two, sit down at my computer terminal and proceed to squeeze the whole mess through my filter of "reason." About 600 words come out the other side.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that my filter was clogged.

It happens to columnists. Sometimes you're just brain-tired. Sometimes, somebody substitutes live ammunition in the war game that is your personal life, and that takes all your attention. Sometimes, if you're a middle-age woman, it's what your mom calls "those damn hormones." Sometimes it's all of the above. Or more.

The telltale sign: Sentences that should take two minutes take 10 or 15. Then you kill those sentences and write new ones. Then you kill your whole lead or try to make your ending your lead. Then you wonder why the hell you're writing about this subject anyway and who reads the paper anymore let alone cares?

Time for time out.

You turn off the computer and go someplace where the TV doesn't work, the phone doesn't ring, the magazines don't fill the mailbox and the newspaper doesn't land on the front stoop with an insistent thwack.

You begin to exhale as well as inhale. You come out of your crouch. Your hands and jaw unclench. You eat your dinner, you don't suck it down. You actually hear music and the sound of wind in pine trees. You marvel at the many colors the Pacific Ocean can turn.

You find you haven't much to say. And that feels swell.

Then you are back, looking at your computer screen. The phone rings. The mail arrives. The world resumes its incessant chant: Attention must be paid. Attention must be paid. Attention must be paid.

Your filter is only partially cleaned, but you shove it into place. This is your job.&lt;